Suora Umiliana’s dark hair has been stripped right back behind her ears. It rears like a stark hedgerow behind a pinpricked expanse of scalp. Flavia plucked for so long she wore out a groove in the middle of the tweezers.
Ghostanza smiles at the choir nun.
‘In Venice, a woman is only considered beautiful if she has more hair plucked than remaining. Sadly I have a small mole on my scalp which prevents me from achieving a brow such as yours. If it weren’t for the fucus on my cheeks you would see they are quite green with envy.’
Someone cleverer than Suora Umiliana might wonder why La Perfetta is so keen to play with her pretty choir nuns, because she is not the only strange-looking thing in Ghostanza’s parlour. Suora Lampidia’s hazel eyes are as playful as ever but her cheeks are awash with orange cerussa and Ghostanza has drawn matching triangles were where her eyebrows used to live. The mouths of both choir nuns have been replaced by small black slugs taking refuge under their noses.
Both of them look very odd, but who is there to tell them? Not the servant nuns, who have to wash Suora Umiliana’s velvet cushions every time her little dog eats sugared prunes. Not Suora Benedetta, who has trodden on a rusty nail and is now oozing puss from her foot in the infirmary, unable to walk but rather proud to be suffering one fifth of Christ’s wounds. Certainly not Flavia, who can think about nothing other than finding her way into the painted box on Ghostanza’s dressing table.
Suora Umiliana smiles up at Ghostanza. Her plucked hair is tinged with pale green, courtesy of the verdigris Flavia put in her hairdye.
Ghostanza has covered up her oval glass so the choir nuns cannot see how they look, but they can all see each other and are full of praise for their fellow sisters’ beauty. Perhaps it is their admiration of Ghostanza, who is positively dancing among them, assuring them that everything is Venetian, perfect. But the curl in Suora Lampidia’s lips is not kind when Suora Umiliana’s remaining hairs are scraped into a tower and her ears hung with ugly brass rings.
‘Will you not try some of this?’
Suora Umiliana passes the pot of black lip salve to Ghostanza, who shakes her head benignly.
‘On this day of finery, I will be a mere background. Think of me as a wintry sea against which the colourful ships’ masts flutter.’
Ghostanza is aglow with suppressed laughter. She tries hard to keep a straight face but when Lampidia opens her mouth and the black fucus smears over her front teeth she lets out a shriek and collapses, giggling into a chair.
Umiliana laughs too, but Lampidia is quick to point out that her forehead looks as high as Mount Sinai. A bitter argument breaks out, accompanied by fierce rubbings of face and lips. Ghostanza laughs all the while, only recovering her composure when Suora Umiliana jumps to her feet.
‘Mona Ghostanza!’
There is fury on her blistering forehead, and another kind of agitation which Flavia recognises but cannot put a name to. The kind of look when someone knows an unkind thing and suddenly aches to say it.
‘My dear?’
Ghostanza blinks through tears of laughter.
‘Mona Ghostanza you have made pretty work of us today,’ Suora Umiliana pulls out her ugly earrings, ‘but perhaps you can be forgiven for seeking idle distraction at such a time.’
‘Now what are you talking about, my little plucked grouse?’
Ghostanza stretches her arms out and affects a yawn.
‘My father has written to me …’
‘Your father can write? Goodness, the skills of the governor have increased no end since I came to Santa Giuliana.’
‘He will know well enough how to write RA and GT on a marriage contract when the time comes!’
‘What nonsense are you talking about?’
Ghostanza’s words are measured but her face is whiter than a dawn frost and her lips burn red enough to make Suora Umiliana take two paces back.
‘M–my father writes Ridolfo Alfani is set to marry your stepdaughter. He says theirs will be a blessed union, that Gilia Tassi is called Gilia la Bella by all who see her.’
* * *
Dusk is thickening when Flavia bolts down the remains of her supper, sitting on the roots of the poplar by the convent wall. Down the line of wall she can just make out the circle of fresh mortar. The younger nuns come here sometimes, during the day. They run their fingers round the edges and whisper to one another with their heads bent and their faces hidden, just as Ghostanza once whispered to her lover before the last psalms of the day.
Licking her fingers, Flavia wanders back towards the cloister and the narrow band of orange that spills out of Ghostanza’s window when her candles are still lit.
Up the staircase the passageway is pitch black and warm as an oven on feast day. Nervously she feels her way to Ghostanza’s doorway, expecting to find her sprawled on her bed or gazing into the oval glass, bitten raw by ill humour. But La Perfetta is not to be seen, either in the bedchamber or the parlour.
The oil burners unfurl a sickly scent.
Flavia peers under the little daybed.
Perhaps Ghostanza is in another part of the convent, but Flavia did not see her out in the grounds and tonight she will certainly not be pulling wishbones with Suora Umiliana in the dining hall. Looking back on it the pretty choir nuns were lucky they left straight away, while Ghostanza still sat dumbly in her chair. Flavia was not far behind them.
A horrible notion emerges. Less in her head than her bowels, which start to fidget and squirm away from their unwanted promotion to an organ of thought.
What if Ghostanza has left the convent?
Suora Benedetta is still in the infirmary and the featherbrained listener nun has been promoted to gatekeeper. What if Ghostanza has managed to threaten a key from her? Even if she cannot go back to her husband’s house, she must have friends in the city.
Again Flavia’s bowels clench. She hardly dares look at the dressing table, where the painted box ought to be. Ghostanza would not have left without it, not if Il Sicofante is right about her recipes. And if the box is gone it will not be Ghostanza Dolfin shuffling around the inside the wall with no beginning and no end; it will be Flavia di Maestro Bartofolo da San Fortunato, her stiff plaits drying out beneath her cap along with the bitter white memory of Ghostanza’s cerussa.
She turns slowly, her eyes wandering up the legs of the dressing table, in and out of the crowds of perfumed water, salves and powder pots.
The little winged boys are still there, grinning among the peacocks.
Flavia hurries over to the box and eases her fingernails beneath the lid.
Still locked.
She drops her head in relief. The floor gives a waxy reflection, its tiles encroached at the edge of her sight by a hem of deep, cochineal red. A silky trail. She tracks it to the foot of the window curtain where it disappears.
Crouching down, Flavia pulls carefully at the edge of the curtain. Ghostanza is slouched on the stones, legs folded and head tilted to the window casement. Her eyes are closed and her hair falls untidily over her face, fluttering with each parting breath. The cerussa has been refreshed and her lips are a warning vermillion but her jaw is loose and a snail track of saliva runs down her chin.
Even with the cerussa she looks old. Pouched and limp, like an empty purse. The layers of powder weigh on her brow like a lifetime of bad thoughts.
Not daring to breathe, Flavia leans closer. The front of Ghostanza’s dress is dappled with sweet-smelling splotches, a trail of passito from breast to lap. The collar of her undershirt is loose and the thread of the key chain is fired by candlelight.
She should wait.
Il Sicofante would tell her to wait. The apothecary prepares everything, the same as her father when he is grinding, sifting and stirring.
Patience, Flavia.
But the wall hangings of the blushing room flap in her mind and the soft crack of pastry is on her tongue.
She reaches around Ghostanza’s neck and feels for the clasp: two interlocking loops. Gently turned, the chain slackens. Pulling the key up through her undershirt, Flavia watches the stray knots of hair rising and falling over Ghostanza’s face. Carefully she draws the curtain over her, creeps back to the painted box, and slides the key into the lock.
A folded pad of cotton, squeezed tightly around the edges of the box. Flavia tucks her fingernails around it and peels it back. Underneath is a collection of hair ribbons. Every colour Maestro Bartofolo ever made and some he could only imagine. A rainbow of interleaving smoothness that Ghostanza never uses on herself. Nervously Flavia ploughs through them, parting the feather soft strands until her fingers find leather. A gasp of relief is blocked by a fist to the mouth. Breathing quickly, she buries her fingers deeper into the ribbons. There are bumps and crevices. The book of recipes must be very old. Her fingers inch around, finding more roundness than squareness.
Cold doubt begins to creep up the back of her neck. Grabbing the nearest candle, she pulls the ribbons apart and scoops her hand in.
The thing she is holding is small, round, stiff and brown. It has a leathery covering, but it is not the skin of an animal.
A tiny head stretches obliquely from the back of the skull. The nose is almost entirely swallowed by a bulbous brow. There is a mouth. The mouth looks human, though it gapes a little where it meets a squashed cheek, like a sleeper trying to breathe when his nose is blocked. The limbs, though twisted and hard, look like something that might once have been unwrapped, pink and warm, from their swaddling bands. It is much smaller than anything she saw at Zia Caracosa’s house, and the wet nurse used to get them very young. It is dark too, but skin always goes dark when it dies, unless you scrape the fat off and lay it in the sun. Flavia traces a finger over the stretched skull. Up close the oil burners do not cover its smell, a darker version of a deathbed stench, unusual for something so small and crinkled.
Gently she returns the brown baby to its nest of ribbons, then takes up the cotton pad to cover it. As she beds it down a loud cracking noise fills her head. She blinks very hard because no one told her there was going to be a storm today. Twice more, the smack of something hard on her ear. Her knees send shockwaves up her thighs as they hit the floor. The box, snapped shut, is still in her hands. For a moment she wonders how she has fallen but the clanging in her eardrums makes it hard to think. Another cracking noise and she is flying backwards on her heels, her head rolling up and into the face of Ghostanza Dolfin.
She is brilliant in the flickering light. Candida but golden. Lips slightly parted, relaxed. Eyes clear and kind as a priest delivering the last rites.
Flavia kneels before her with bells in her ears. Blood is coming from somewhere, trickling along the bridge of her nose and down her cheeks.
Ghostanza bends over. Her outstretched thumb gently wipes a trail of red tears from Flavia’s cheek. In her other hand is a silver card-case, dented along one side and wet with blood. The only hard edge in the room. Everything else is underwater, blurred. Ghostanza’s knotted hair seems to float fathoms under a broken-backed ship. But the hard edge of silver is still there. As she looks down tenderly she raises the card-case in her right hand and brings it scything towards Flavia’s skull. A lunge to her right and the case slices across her shoulder, ripping through her undershirt and into flesh. Scrabbling to her feet, Flavia throws all four of her limbs towards the doorway, not caring which one reaches it first. She crashes through, turning as the frame catches her shoulder.
Ghostanza’s face is in the oval glass. A swivel of the neck and she is staring straight at Flavia. Her expression is still tranquil, a little inquiring. Flavia does not wait to see what she will do next. Lunging through the bedchamber, she runs into the blackened passage, hammering the walls either side with the palms of her hands to keep herself straight.
Down the stairwell and out into night. She has a sense of something behind her. An evil wind chasing. She does not look back as she streaks through the courtyard, towards the outer wall. Desperately she prays for the solid hulk of Suora Benedetta keeping guard, but the gatekeeper nun is nursing one fifth of Christ’s wounds and this wall has no end for her now.
There are footsteps somewhere, gaining with each snatched breath. Whatever beast it is that shivers and rages beneath Ghostanza’s blue cape, it is let loose on her this night.
The long stretch of stone marks the end of her escape. The painted box is still in her hands. Her only thought is to get rid of it. With one great heave she throws it high into the air. It thuds softly into the long grass on the other side.
She blinks the blood from her eyes. Pressing her chest hard against the wall, she drives her fingertips deep into the gap around the stones above her head. Arms straining, she kicks off her clogs and does the same with the toes of one foot, then the other, spreading herself flat as she pulls herself up from the ground. Some crevices are deeper than others. She digs in until her nails tear, edging higher, arms strained and burning in a desperate embrace of stone.
She is almost at the top when a cold hand circles around her ankle. With a swift tug she is plucked into air.